Page 22 - MABE GENEALOGY

The Mabe genealogy line, from England (1600’s) to the United States (1700’s), Virginia and North Carolina.

one minister complained, "as might make their due and constant attendance
upon the publick worship and Service of God impossible to them."

To address the problem of large parishes and to take the church to the
people, most parishes constructed a number of chapels of ease at convenient
spots in outlying areas in order to facilitate church attendance for
parishioners who lived at great distances from the main, or "mother,"
church. Colonial ministers served the mother church and any chapels of ease
on a rotating basis, officiating and preaching first at one church and then the
others in their turn, often on successive Sundays, although sometimes
ministers held mid-week or Saturday services at their chapels. Ministers, in
fact, often preached the same sermon several weeks in a row to the different
congregations in their parishes. As a result, many colonists only saw the
rector of the parish once every three or four weeks. In order to provide
church services in the minister's absence, vestries often hired clerks to read
prayers from the Book of Common Prayer and a sermon either from The
Book of Homilies or from the published works of popular English preachers
(particularly, in the eighteenth century, from the discourses of Archbishop of
Canterbury John Tillotson).

The men and women who worshipped in the Church of England in Virginia
came from all segments of society, because, technically, the established
church was the church of all colonists, rich or poor, white or black, slave
or free — although slaves often worshipped in segregated galleries or
attended a separate service. Church edifices varied considerably in
appearance, from the stately buildings in Jamestown, Williamsburg (Bruton
Parish), and Lancaster County (Christ Church) to backcountry churches that
resembled tobacco warehouses. The buildings were usually rectangular or
cruciform (cross-shaped) and, by the eighteenth century, were often
constructed in the Georgian style. Churches rarely had steeples. On the
interior, Anglican churches in Virginia by the mid-1700s would typically
have been dominated by a two- or three-decker pulpit, usually off to the side
that would have been the center of attention in the church (the pulpit
emphasizing the Protestant emphasis on preaching). The parish clerk used
the lowest level as a reading desk and led the congregational responses from
there. The minister led the service and read the day's scriptural lessons from
the second level. He would have preached from the highest level of the
pulpit. While sermons were of great interest to colonial Virginians (they

sometimes did not attend church on days when the minister was not present
and they would not hear an original discourse), some parishioners' attention

21